Nutmeg, Wells, and a Century+

Three races at two different locations were on the schedule for this weekend. Saturday morning was the Nutmeg Games in New Britian with both a 4/5 and 4 field. Sunday morning I made a last minute decision to head down to Wells Ave and made it just in time for the A race.

Nutmeg, 4/5 Field

Only 20 starters or so, perhaps due to the early start time of 8 AM. The cat 4 field had something like 70 starters, and I was surprised there weren’t more here. Stayed at Big Time’s in Enfield on Friday night, and we still barely showed up in time for the race at 7:35. At least I didn’t have to get up to make the 2 hour drive from Boston in the morning. We rushed through signup, got dressed, and hopped in the race. Today was the debut for the new “Scorpion Slayers” kits and we were ready to rock.

The course is a 1-mile loop with mostly gentle turns. There’s a little bit of a climb after the back straight, followed by a downhill left-hander leading into a 300m flat to the finish. Other than a little hole on the climb, the pavement is fast and smooth. Both the 4/5 and 4 fields would do 20 laps for 2 miles total.

I spent the first several laps sitting on the back of our 20 man field to warm up a bit and feel out the track. With such a small field the pace was consistently slow, but every time someone tried to make a break everyone would chase it down.

There were three primes in the race. The first two were two-place primes, and the third was winner take all. As we approached the line with 15 to go I moved up from the back, anticipating the prime bell to ring. No such luck. I spent the lap on the front riding hardish tempo and on the next lap, the prime bell rang. I eased up a bit to force people to come around me if they wanted to go faster. Sure enough a rider or two came around and I grabbed a wheel. I sat three wheels back until we crested the short climb, and launched an attack as we approached the downhill left-hander. Coming out of the turn I was out in the front, but at least one rider had been able to snag my wheel. I popped out of the saddle to start an early sprint, but it was just too far to go and I didn’t accomplish much more than provide a lead out. In doing so I reached a new all time high heart rate of 201 bpm. It was a struggle to rejoin the pelican. Big Time missed my initial move but fought hard to overtake the three riders who had latched on and came up just short in the end.

The second prime seemed to come up quickly, and it was a no go for me. I didn’t feel right after that first attempt. Maybe it had to do with my heart rate breaking the 200 barrier, who knows. Big Time was out for blood after missing the move on the first prime and looked like he was positioned perfectly to take the second. I couldn’t see much from back in the field, but he ended up narrowly missing the prime at the line, taking third. Immediately after the prime, Oscar Jimenez (NEBC) and Matthew Spaits (BRC) launched an attack that really strung out the field for 2 additional laps of pain.

Shortly after things settled down, the prime bell rang again with 7 to go. I really wasn’t feeling very strong at this point, and had no intentions of contesting it. However, everyone else must have been suffering even more than me. The rider in front of me slowly moved up along side the pelican as we went down the back straight and continued to move up as we went up the hill. There was no reaction whatsoever by anyone. I held onto his wheel as we came around the downhill turn. With 300m to go he tried the same move that I had attempted on the first lap, coming out of the saddle to sprint. It was not a very explosive effort, and I was able to hold his wheel with ease while staying seated. With 100m to go I came around with a ~80% effort. Another racer that had been on my wheel tried to come around me shortly after, but I was able to turn up the gas to 100% and win the prime. Sprint power wasn’t too crazy at 1030W for 5, but this was enough to take the HR up to 199 from 195 bpm. It’s tough to produce big power when your heart rate is so high.

On the very next lap there was a crash. Coming around the downhill left-hander the pelican was 2 riders wide. I was on Big Time’s wheel on the outside when a junior rider on the inside line lost control of his front wheel. He came shooting to the outside and made hard contact with Big Time’s left shoulder. The weight differential here must’ve been at least 50 or 60 pounds, and this poor junior might as well hit a wall. His bike jumped sideways and he went down hard at 25 mph, laying out directly in front of me. I thought I was done for, but luckily I was able to aim for a line between his body and his bike and bunny hopped almost completely over him. My rear tire got a little tangled up on something, maybe his front wheel. As I went to sprint back into the pelican my rear wheel got loose and I was sure something was wrong. I stopped at the SRAM tent and got taken care of by Merlin.

Coming into the last lap I made sure to be on Matthew Spaits’ wheel. I was sure he was the strongest rider in the field, and I ended up being right. He seemed to have a leadout rider working for him that drove up the pace a bit and kept things single file until the hill. I was sitting third wheel as we went up the hill, but knew that the pace wasn’t fast enough to keep people from swarming for long. A train was coming up the inside of the turn and I freaked. I didn’t want to lose my position. As we crested the top of the hill I attacked on the outside, and Oscar jumped on my wheel. He shouted at me repeatedly “GO JAY GO!” and we got a nice gap. We were doing 31 as we went around the downhill turn. Oscar continued to encourage me to go, and I gave one last effort for just 10 seconds or so before I blew up completely. Oscar came around with nice acceleration, but came up just short at the line, being overtaken by Spaits. After blowing up I couldn’t turn over another pedal stroke and coasted the rest of the way to the finish. We really did have a nice gap, and it took the pelican quite a bit to overtake me. Big Time rolled through in 12^th, right next to me in 13^th.

Nutmeg, 4 Field

The cat 4 race went off right after the 4/5 race, and I felt sick. The sun was beating down hard, my stomach was out of control, and I was doubtful I’d even be able to finish. I lined up at the back of the ~70 man field just hoping to hold on.

Immediately after rolling out it was obvious that the pace would be much quicker than the 4/5 field. We had only averaged 23.0 in the 4/5s, probably due to the small field size. In the 4 field, we would average 25.7. I think a few riders got dumped off the back early on.

During the first 10 laps I was oblivious to what was going on. I just sat on the back doing my best to recover. We were going way faster than the previous race, but sitting in felt effortless. With 10 to go I was feeling a thousand times better and started to move up in the field.

Unfortunately, moving around in a cat4 field of 70 on a course that really isn’t very wide was nearly impossible. There were some very sketchy riders around me, and I definitely didn’t feel comfortable trying to squeeze my way to the front. After 3 or 4 laps of doing what I thought could be called “moving up”, I looked behind me and no one was there. I was still on the rear end of the pelican.

That was pretty much the race for me. I continued to try and move up right to the finish, but the course was just jammed from side to side. In the end I rolled through the finish somewhere in the middle. I was extremely frustrated having gone most the race without making any real effort or really even racing at all. Big Time actually got to touch some wind air at the front of the pelican, but also ended up being stuck for the sprint to the finish. I can’t say I’m a fan of such crowded races. Looking at the power data, this was by far the easiest race of the weekend for me despite being much faster than the 4/5 field. That’s the power of the pelican!

Wells Ave ‘A’ Race – 6/22

Erica was leaving Sunday morning for a work related trip. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do for riding, but I had a craving to race more having screwed up my finish in the Nutmeg 4/5 race and having a meaningless race in the 4 field. There was also a Cervelo event going on at Wells that I wanted to check out. After sleeping in too long, and seeing Erica off, I left the house at 10 AM. I was lucky to make it down to Wells Ave at the end of the B race, where Colby Ricker (NEBC) was delivering some hurt in a 3-man breakaway on a demo Soloist. I signed up for the A Race about 5 minutes before the start.

The Cervelo event looked awesome. They were setting up a ton of riders on absolutely sick bikes (including the SLC-SL) decked out with 2008 Zipp wheelsets. I had mixed feeling about demoing one, not wanting any additional desire to blow ten large on a bicycle that won’t make me any faster than my six13. In the end the lack of time kept me from demoing one.

I’ve never raced a pure ‘A’ race at Wells before. I’ve done the combined A/B race plenty of times, but have always raced with the B’s when given the choice. The BRC racer at registration snickered when I said I was a cat 4, and added that the field was large (60+) and likely to be very fast.

I spent the majority of the race hiding out of the wind. There was a nasty headwind around turn 3 or 4, and every time I thought about shooting for a prime it would change my mind. Coming around turn 3 on the outside of the pelican while trying to move up was brutal, felt like hitting a brick wall. I wasn’t suffering as badly as I expected sitting in, but chasing down primes probably would have killed me so I ended up not contesting any.

There was a women’s prime during the middle of the race. I was wondering if such a thing would even work with a pelican full of dudes constantly attacking, but I think it may have ended up working out. It was as if the pelican went neutral as the women came to the front and duked it out for the prime. Even the lap after the prime stayed relatively slow before we resumed racing speed. This was a pretty sweet break and my heart rate went as low as 138.

With four to go I started gaining position to set up for the finish. It was refreshing to be able to do so after Nutmeg. I got up to the front third of the field and noticed champion sprinter Roy Van Cleef (NEBC) there so I stuck to his wheel. With one to go we were still a good 20 wheels back while moving quickly at 30 mph, and I was starting to think “you going to move up some day Roy?” Normally when I want to move up I look to a side of the pelican to do it. Not Roy. We hit the back stretch and a nice hole opens up right in the middle for him and we moved up to 5 or 10 wheels back, but I did get detached from his wheel. Coming around turns 3 and 4 I stuck to the inside and moved up to get on a two-man Quad Cycles train that was moving fast. With 200m to go the Quad Cycles leadout pulled off and the sprinters were making their moves. I had the pleasure of watching Roy on my left take off with ridiculous acceleration. Truly amazing. I tried to do the same but could barely hit 1000W, something like 75% of my peak sprint power when fresh. Still, I was able to come around a few riders and finish in what I think was 9^th, just a few bike lengths back from the winner. After the race I got to meet Solobreak (see link at right).

After the race I went over the Panera for lunch, had 2 cokes, then met up with Rich (Scorpion Slayers) for a ride. Riding with Rich goes something like this: ride at threshold, ride at threshold, ride more at threshold, totally random attack for 5 minutes, more riding at threshold, totally random downhill sprint, more riding at threshold, repeat. We ended up doing this for 60 miles after the race, bringing me to 106 miles for the day. After 75 miles of riding I was doing 10 minute efforts at 275W, just short of FTP. At mile 93 we had a downhill sprint race (I lost) and I hit 1300W doing so. The ride was relentless.